You can't beat a good moan about the weather

The recent mild spell has been an awful let-down.

It must be said, it’s all been a little disappointing so far – at least for we southern softies. No television weather forecasters telling us how “bitter” the cold is, when the temperature just sneaks below freezing (in Fahrenheit, naturally. We leave Celsius, like the euro, to others less fortunate). No complaints south of the Watford Gap, as the Home Counties grind to a halt under the insurmountable burden of a half-inch of snow, as last year.

It’s not the same, being unable to moan about the lack of gritters, the untreated roads and nearly breaking your neck on the icy pavements. The only low mumble of discontent can be heard from local councils, with their carefully harvested mounds of grit and salt and nowhere to spread them. You can’t beat a good old moan, particularly at this time of year, with your best New Year resolutions already in bits and the Easter eggs already in the shops.

Dammit, how hard can it be to abstain from the demon drink for a mere two days a week, as recommended by those good folk who are trying to keep the rest of us from an early grave? Impossible, is the answer, particularly if you’re sitting around with only the desperate state of the nation and its tennis to complain about. And what about the melting polar ice cap that was going to divert the warming flow of the Gulf Stream away from our shores, giving us the same freezing winter temperatures enjoyed by our Canadian friends on the same latitude? A light layer of frost on the grass or your car’s windscreen is just not good enough. And still no sign of those polar bears that we were expecting, drifting past Beachy Head on the ice floes?

There’s only the television to shout at, no one like that climate change numpty, who, as the snows were blanketing the country this time three years ago, put forward the interesting idea that the bleak midwinter was a good time to get rid of your fridge, which was doing such irreparable damage to the ozone layer. Keep your perishables in the larder as your granny had to do, he advised. It certainly worked for one of my readers: everything went green.

The siren call for independence has muffled the message even from Scotland, where each winter we could be guaranteed pictures of snow-capped mountains, snowbound bothies and the natives up to their kneecaps in the stuff. Every year at this time, I would receive garbled messages from Scottish shepherds, putting aside their cold porridge to describe the magnificent efforts of local postmistress Mrs McKay as, her silver shovel a blur, she cleared the Cockbridge to Tomintoul road, so that sheep might safely graze.